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1ENTERTAINMENT .

Night Live") Gross and
Christina ("St. Elsewhere")
Pickles. "It's really inter-
esting ," Bernstein
said. "Chance Quinn, who
stars as Matthew, my older
brother, would come up to
him (Jones) and say, 'Dad, I
really need help on this pro-
ject,' and all of a sudden
Albert Einstein would ap-
pear." Some of the other
people who pop out of Jones'
imagination on the show are
Freud, Dr. Joyce Brothers,
Robin Leach and Casey
Kasem. "There's a lot of
special effects."
Bernstein loves playing
the role of Aurora but ad-
mitted that she and her
character are quite different.
"I'm two years older than

Jaclyn Bernstein's
acting career
has been filled
with sunny days.

Jaclyn Bernstein with her television family.

THE
GIRL
NEXT
DOOR

STEVEN M. HARTZ

Special to the Jewish News

when 3-year-
old Jaclyn
Bernstein en-
tered a beau-
ty pageant for
tots in Los Angeles in 1981,
she went through the same in-
terview on stage as all of the
other young beauties, with
one exception. After the inter-
view, she grabbed a micro-
phone and started singing,
"The sun'll come out tomor-
row . ." When she was
through, she got down on one
knee and exclaimed, "Big
finish!" Within minutes, she
was crowned little beauty
queen.

Bernstein, now 11, ad-
mitted she didn't have any
intention in pursuing an ac-
ting career back then. "I sort
of just fell into it. As a gag,
my aunt entered me into

that beauty pageant and
taught me the words to
`Tomorrow,' a song from
Annie, and I really burst it
out, but I was only 3 years
old, and it was really just for
fun." Bernstein didn't real-
ize those lyrics would
foreshadow her acting ca-
reer.
In the eight years since the
beauty pageant, she has ap-
peared in more than 90
commercials, 20 sitcoms and
a handful of movies. Last
week marked the first
episode of her television
series, "The People Next
Door," a new sitcom that
airs 8:30 p.m.. Mondays on
CBS.
The brown-haired, brown-
eyed Bernstein stars as
Aurora Kellogg, the
daughter of a cartoonist
whose imagination is so
vivid that it comes to life.
The show's other stars are
Jeffrey (Ferris Bueller's Day
Off) Jones, Mary ("Saturday

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Aurora and a little more
sophisticated. I'm also more
of a tomboy than Aurora, but
she's hip."
Carrying on a tradition,
Bernstein is the sixth
generation of actors in her
family. "My family goes all
the way back to the Jewish
theater," she said. Her
father, Jay Lester, once
worked in theater and per-
formed stand-up comedy,
and her 30-year-old cousin,
Michael Burstein, is a singer
in Israel.
Two years ago, Bernstein
played the title role in the
TV movie "A Fight for
Jenny," a true story that
starred Lesley Ann Warren
as a single white parent who
falls in love with a black
man (Philip Michael
Thomas). Her other motion
picture-for-television credits
include starring roles in
"Right to Die" and "Fight
for Life," where she por-
trayed a little girl with
epilepsy. "It was so exciting
working with Jerry Lewis,
who played my father in the
movie," she said.
Bernstein also saw it as a
challenge to act in such seri-
ous movies, but she liked it
— although she much prefers
doing comedies.
Last year, she played Mar-
sha Brady's daughter in the
television special "A Very
Brady Christmas."
"It was really a lot of fun.
When I watch reruns of the
show, I think to myself,
Wow, I'm part of the Brady
Bunch."'
Some of her guest-star ap-
pearances on television in-

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THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS

111